Breaking into the crime game isn’t easy, but every month, a few brave and talented souls make a go of it. For readers, there are few experiences so thrilling as finding a new author whose career is just beginning and whose work promises years of enjoyment to come. But it’s sometimes hard to find those debuts. That’s where we come in. We’re scouring the shelves in search of auspicious debuts and recommending the very best for your reading pleasure.
Kate Weinberg, The Truants (Putnam)
Kate Weinberg is obsessed with Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance in 1926, and in The Truants, her characters are, too; Weinberg’s debut follows a brilliant young student as she embarks upon an intense academic exchange with a badly behaved Agatha Christie scholar. Perfect for fans of psychological thrillers and traditional mysteries alike!
Luke Geddes, Heart of Junk (Simon & Schuster)
At last! The crime fiction refutation of Marie Kondo’s minimalist philosophy we’ve all been waiting for. When an antiques television show plans a visit to a small town currently freaking out about a missing pageant princess, surprising connections will come to the fore, and any of us who still cling to the remnants of the past will feel like maybe someday we can use whatever is in the attic to solve a crime.
Amy K. Green, The Prized Girl (Dutton)
When a teenage pageant-winning do-gooder turns up murdered, and police quickly pin the blame on a creepy stalker, it’s up to her black sheep sister to keep the investigation going, no matter how many of the folks in her small town have secrets to hide. Inspired by real life, and the perfect read for anyone with a sister they’d kill to protect.
Tiffany Tsao, The Majesties (Atria)
Tiffany Tsao’s visceral debut is filled with rage, and reads a bit like Crazy Rich Asians if the book began with familicide instead of romance—within the first few pages, a woman wakes up in the hospital to discover her entire family has been poisoned by her sister. The Majesties then flashes back to the narrator’s childhood, as she and her sister are raised as the protected daughters of a super-wealthy clan of Indonesian-Chinese tycoons. Stifled by the expectations of their class, they struggle to find happiness, growing increasingly bitter and disappointed. Why not start off the new year with the perfect tear-it-all-down read?
Ani Katz, A Good Man (Penguin)
When a book comes out with a title like this one has, you know it’s going to be about someone truly terrible. In Katz’s mature and wicked debut, we encounter a man who’s slowly crumpling under the pressure of his mounting debts and need for perfection. He only cares what the outside world thinks, and his goal is to be seen as a responsible caretaker, burdened but cheerful. However, he’s done something bad—but how bad is difficult to imagine. So, too, is the dark past that informs the actions of the present. Katz’s debut evokes Highsmith’s Ripley, or Denise Mina’s The Long Drop, and heralds the entry of a fantastic new voice to the genre.
Tanen Jones, The Better Liar (Ballantine)
Tanen Jones’ debut joins a host of crime novels featuring women teaming up for nefarious ends, including Lisa Levy’s The Passenger and Amy Gentry’s Last Woman Standing, and I’m delighted to see so much teamwork gracing the page of the feminist thriller (although of course, even the best partnerships can fall apart given the right stressors). After her father’s death, a young woman finds out she won’t inherit anything unless she can find her sister, estranged for over a decade. When she fails to track her errant family down, she hires a drifter to impersonate her missing sister so as to be able to claim her inheritance. At first, the arrangement is working out for everyone—but both women have their own secrets to hide.
M. L. Huie, Spitfire (Crooked Lane)
Former spy Livy Nash is long past her glory days and rotting away proofreading advice columns for women of a certain age when a chance encounter with Ian Fleming leads to a new opportunity. The spy novelist sends her on a task with plenty of opportunities for vengeance against those who killed her lover in the war, and Livy Nash may get her chance to finally feel relevant once more.
Gregory Bastianelli, Snowball (Flame Tree Press)
Gregory Bastianelli’s debut is the perfect read for the depths of winter. With one foot in crime and the other in horror, Bastianelli has crafted an irresistibly schlocky thriller. A bunch of strangers stuck on a highway during a blizzard soon discover there are twisted forces keeping them there.
